![]() Tearing up, he texted his children and then called his wife – afraid. 15, Mike Brevik sat inside the cab of his bucket loader tractor, pointing his headlights into the inky floodwaters. “If nothing is done in regards to the river, we’re probably sitting ducks again.” ‘Everyone was taken off guard’īefore dawn on Nov. Reene Cabrera purchased a home in Everson in September 2021 - only for it to be inundated nearly two months later.Īfter the flooding, “we didn’t know what we were going to do – if it was safe to rebuild, if it was safe to come back home, if it was better to just walk away,” Cabrera said, standing in the backyard of his now-empty home, where hedges yellowed at the floodline and a bicycle remained, unused for months. The floodwaters that cascaded through Everson later contributed to hundreds of millions of dollars in insured damages in nearby British Columbia. International leaders are also desperate to find solutions. In recent decades and despite a bevy of studies, officials have taken few tangible steps to protect Everson and the surrounding communities, with efforts slowed by bureaucracy, a lack of funding and competing priorities. All have a hand in how the river – and flood risk – are managed. So far, local officials don’t have answers. NBC News spoke with about two dozen residents of Everson and nearby communities, including many who questioned whether the town could withstand future floods and were demanding that the government take measures to reduce risk and impacts. In the future, the researchers expect more damaging floods.Ī knot of problems now face Everson’s leaders, including a lack of housing, squabbles over river dredging and rising risks from climate change. ![]() Canadian researchers estimated that the probability of such powerful streamflows across the region – in Washington and British Columbia – was 120% to 330% more likely because of climate change. In Everson, record-breaking rainfall and soaring temperatures that melted alpine snow combined to send the Nooksack River over its banks and into the town’s center. Historic rainfall – associated with climate change – is causing a dramatic rise in flooding and pushing communities to the brink. That makes Everson part of a slow-churning crisis playing out in eastern Kentucky, the suburbs of St. “It’s just been getting worse.”įlooding has vexed Everson for more than a century, but climate change and years of inaction have raised the stakes, threatening to wash parts of the community away and leaving some residents wondering if they can live here in the long term. “Our family has been here 95 years and gone through a lot of floods,” said Jim Glass, a retired Everson city worker.
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